You can never know too much about Johnny Cash, one of the few icons who stands up to repeated listenings, readings, late-night and early morning considerations. You come home from a bad night out, a great night out, sort through the Cash catalogue, and I guarantee there’s something there to send you off to dreamland and get you up and going in the morning.
Still, when that black and white American Recordings vintage photo caught my eye in the bookstore, my first thought was of Rob, the narrator/protagonist of High Fidelity, the 2000 film starring John Cusack and based on Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel: “Hey, I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I’m certainly not the dumbest. I mean, I’ve read books like Unbearable Lightness of Being and Love in the Time of Cholera. . . . but I have to say. . . my all-time favorite book is Johnny Cash’s autobiography Cash by Johnny Cash.” With a recommendation like that, and a recycled price of seven bucks, I couldn’t resist buying the book, although I didn’t intend to read it, at least not immediately, at least not until I got home.
And Cash, by Johnny Cash–or depending on your degree of familiarity, John, or J.R.–is an intriguing look at the development of the man and the artist. Read this and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles and you’ll see that partially understanding how they became Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash in no way reveals nor strips the mystery or magic.
Johnny is a little more forthcoming regarding (or perhaps just more interested in) his childhood than Dylan, although other subjects, ex-wife Vivian and the early years with his young daughters, are addressed fairly briefly. In any autobiography the reader is expected to indulge the author in what most interests him or her regarding self as subject, and Cash is no exception. As compensation, we manage to avoid much of the speculative by-necessity tone of unauthorized biographies (see Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, by Charles J. Shields) or biographies based on historical figures (see Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt) and learn how Johnny Cash achieved the rare feat of staying basically true to his aesthetic principles, with the occasional exception (see “Chicken in Black”), and achieved fame and wealth and eventual contentment and even happiness. Cash deals honestly and at some length with Cash’s lifelong processes of overcoming addiction and remaining a man of faith; inspiring or instructive if you go in for that sort of thing.
For a fan or anyone with literary or musical aspirations, it’s worth considering what young Will thought if he saw Queen Elizabeth from a distance at Kenilworth in 1575; worth wading through a Coney Island swamp with Dylan in search of boxes of Woody’s poems and songs; worth considering what Nelle Lee might have said to Truman Streckfus Persons or his tormentors in the mid-1930’s; worth a description of a ride along a Jamaican beach in a golf cart with Billy Graham, for the glimpses of alchemy that produced Blonde on Blonde and To Kill a Mockingbird and Macbeth and Live at San Quentin. Cash, the Autobiography, by Johnny Cash. Well worth seven bucks.
8 responses
Mr. Stubblefield will be pleased to learn that in my forthcoming biography of Kurt Vonnegut— 200,000 words long, and based on 1,500 letters that Kurt thought he had lost, in addition to the last of a series of interviews I had with him just hours before his fatal fall— there are 1,800 footnotes.
No speculative-by-necessity here, Robert, as there often is with a provincial figure like Miss Lee, or a mysterious genius like Shakespeare. You’ll get 30 bangs for 30 bucks, I guarantee.
Charles J. Shields
And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life (Holt, November)
I prefer Cash as sung by Phoenix in the movie, even though I grew up listening to Cash songs. Stephen on Bourbon Street does a mean Johnny Cash, too. I prefer Hank Williams, but I may just have to read this book after reading Stubblefield’s comments. Dylan’s book was a wonderful read. Good to see more from Robert!
Another fine article from Robert Stubblefield. Thanks for the tip on Johnny Cash–will read his biography as well and may just put on the old Folsom Prison album.
I wouldn’t presume to know what Mr. Stubblefield would be pleased to know, though this essay has convinced me to finally pull “Cash” off the shelf and give it the read it deserves.
Thanks boss.
Stubblefield has the right attitude here, kind of laid-back and easy going, listening to the beat. That’s the way to talk about Johnny Cash. It’s like that old story about the kid who comes up to Ernest Tubb (E.T. to his pals) and asked: “Mr. Tubb, whut dew ah hafta dew to be a big stor lak yew?” To which E.T. replied, simply: “Ya got ta sang it from the hort, boy.” Hell, that boy could have been J.R. I’m willing to believe it was J.R. And that he took Mr. Tubb’s advice to hort.
I remember the first time I heard Cash on the radio, the car radio in my 1953 Ford Fairlane. It was electrifying. There wasn’t no voice like Cash before. No, there really was not. Singular. I believe I was cruising home in the early misty dewy empty morning streets in Detroit, after even the after-hours joints closed, and some dj in Del Rio, Texas (KDRT, 50,000 watts on a clear channel, the hometown voice of America!) followed one of my favorite singers, Rusty Draper, singing “Shifting Whispering Sands” with a very manly deep baritone singing the incredible “I Walk the Line”. Jayziss! That was electric! That was something I had never heard before and no one else had, neither. A brand new singer out of Arkansas! Young, but he’d seen the inside of a hoosegow, that was fer shore.
Mr. Stubblefield seems to have poked up the coals a bit and it’s good to sit in glow and remember.
Thanks for the comments. There is a recent batch of autobiographies/memoirs by popular musicians, but I still believe Cash sets the standard.
I really enjoyed and admire Mockingbird, Charles, and will be first in line at the bookseller in November to pick up And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, A Life. “A provincial figure like Miss Lee, or a mysterious genius like Shakespeare’” strikes me as remarkably accurate phrasing regarding the allure, challenge, and ultimate reward for writer and reader alike in taking on such figures as subjects.
Earlier this summer, I found a cassette tape in my car that I’d never seen before. “Devil’s Right Hand” was the first song, and it quickly became the only thing I listened to. Who doesn’t feel cooler driving aimlessly and blaring Cash on a sluggish, Carolina afternoon? The cassette tape (which also had songs like “Tumbling Tumbleweed” by Gene Autry) appeared without explanation. A gift from the heavens? Maybe.
Now, I need to get a copy of this book.
Thank you, Mr. Stubblefield, for encouraging me to re-read the autobiography of a man whose voice is as natural and compelling as Kurt Vonnegut’s, and serves as a clear warning against the self-serving cant that characterizes ambition.
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